What Cara Delevingne Wants You To Know About Her Trip To Meet Young Refugees In Uganda

Michelle Penelope King is a writer, researcher, advocate and advisor on gender equality practices, currently working for UN Women.

Photo by Edward Echawalu/ UN Foundation

Cara Delevingne is a model, actress, singer and one of the most recognizable faces in the world. Add to that, the role of Champion for the UN Foundation organization, Girl Up, which is focused on educating and empowering girls worldwide. Delevingne recently traveled to Uganda to meet South Sudanese refugees with Girl Up and UNHCR, the UN organization responsible for refugees.

"We actually walked across the same bridges as the 460,000 refugees (an average of 2,000 per day) who have entered Uganda in the last six months alone," Delevingne revealed. "[W]e passed many people walking on foot, carrying all their belongings and children on their backs. Just thinking about how many people were doing that journey with so much stuff, and to be walking for weeks...you can't comprehend it. Their strength is unparalleled."

Here, Delevingne talks to Women@Forbes about her passion advocating for girls and why her recent visit to Uganda was the trip of a lifetime.

Michelle King: What made you want to be the Girl Up Champion?

Cara Delevingne: I think that we should all have equal rights, but when I was a girl…. I grew up believing that boys were stronger, faster, better, smarter than girls. That’s what I was taught to believe. There’s still this thing ingrained in so many cultures that they’re somehow the superior gender, which is not true.

Definitely getting older, and being inspired by so many women, I just want to return that favor to young girls, to make sure that they realize that they can reach their goals to be the best person they can be and to know that they’re unstoppable. No man is better than them in any way, shape or form.

Edward Echawalu/ UN Foundation

King: How important is it to have positive role models for girls? Who is your "girl hero" and why?

Delevingne: When I was a teenager, and as some might say, troubled, I was definitely inspired by a few different people. At the forefront of that was Angelina Jolie, because of the kind of the path that she had led in her life. Becoming an actress, becoming a director, but also the amount of work that she did with the UN and with the refugees inspired me so much.

I always promised myself, especially when I got into modeling and stuff, that no matter what, money and success wouldn’t change what I really wanted in life, which was to make a difference. I feel like this is my dream. I hope that by using my voice, I’m helping girls.

King: What were some of the greatest challenges young girls face in Uganda, that you saw on your trip?

Delevingne: The teenage girls I talked to were wanting most to learn. They talked about child marriage to me, that it was the tradition that around the age of 15 you get married. That’s the most important time to be learning and to carry on learning.

There was this one girl, Sida, who was 15. She had this incredible fire. She was angry and was like, “It’s very simple this is what we need: We need books. We need uniforms."

It makes you feel so spoiled because all they want is an education. That’s it, and that was the last thing I wanted at that age.

Edward Echawalu/ UN Foundation

King: What is the best way to empower young girls?

Delevingne: Education is the way to give girls the power to change their lives. By giving girls an education, you’re giving them the resources they need to help themselves.

That’s all that they want. They don’t want to be pitied. They’re independent females and you can see that by the way they speak. They just want that little chance, that little gift of education which is so small, yet so huge that it will change their lives forever.

King: Was there a moment on your trip that really stood out for you and highlighted the needs of young girls?

Delevingne: We went around in the circle and they said things that made them happy and what they wanted to be when they were older, engineers, doctors. It’s hard because obviously they have all these things that they want and need and it’s like how can I give that to you?

We don’t understand what it’s like to really struggle and have to survive like this. So it’s realizing you’re lucky and (being) grateful.

Edward Echawalu/ UN Foundation

King: With your 30 million plus Instagram followers, do you see social media as your platform for advocacy?

Delevingne: Footage and things on Instagram are subtle ways of getting into people’s minds without having to be like, “Do you know how bad it is? Do you understand it?”

Once you know, you can’t help but care. You can’t help want to make a change, even if it’s in the smallest way possible.

King: How can people make a difference?

Delevingne: It’s not about flying all over somewhere and visiting a refugee camp, it’s about the small things that you can do to make a difference, to you, to your neighbor.

It all starts with yourself, treating yourself well, being kind to yourself, respecting yourself, making sure that other people respect you. From that, you can help people. It all starts with you.

King: You have said that you want to be a director one day. How important is it to share real stories, like those of the refugee girls in Uganda?

Delevingne: I was thinking: When is a movie going to be made about this? People don’t want to watch it because it’s so depressing, but it’s reality. You can’t live in a fantasy world. It’s going to make it far harder to deal with reality, when things go wrong. It’s passing the message on.

I feel like this trip has definitely been like a massive spark to a fire that will be burning for a really long time.

King: Many people are probably not even aware of the refugees in Uganda, what is your message to people to get involved?

Delevingne: There isn’t a quick fix to this problem. It seems like at least there’s something being done. That’s not a reason to not try to do more.

You will be treated the way you treat other people. If for one moment, you could put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realize that that is happening to them, that their world has fallen beneath their feet, then you would actually do something about it. It is that whole bit that behind the numbers, the fact is that we’re all human. Helping a human is helping a human.

Here at Women@Forbes, we want to disrupt the future with powerful women taking their next steps economically, professionally and personally. This is where we share the stories of the doers and disruptors who are already are breaking the future. Starting up and starting over ...